Come on over for dinner, we’ll knock a tater in the head or something! This lovely form of a dinner invite came to us from Vera, a listener in British Columbia who heard it while living in Arkansas. This is part of a complete episode...
What would you bring to a pitch-in? An Indiana transplant shares this newly acquired term for a potluck dinner. Martha points out that the Dictionary of American Regional English has a map showing the distribution of the term, and it’s limited...
Everyone knows about Tang as that orange kick in a glass, but could it also be an entree? A listener from Plano, Texas, found an elderly relative’s plan for family meals from 1947, which lists “tang with molasses” as a main course...
What’s for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for “nothing” dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild...
A riddle from A World’s Treasury of Riddles by Phil Cousineau asks, “A riddle, a riddle, I suppose, a thousand eyes and never a nose.” The trick depends on hearing eyes as something besides a face part. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
Susan, a dental student in Redlands, California, asks about acetabulum, the anatomical term for the hip socket. It goes back to the Latin acetabulum, a vinegar cup, the small table vessel Romans used for dipping bread. Its cup shape made a natural...